COLUMN FOR 10/16
- Dean of Students Victor Arcelus hosted an open forum on recent cuts to Lyft Passes, and President Chapdelaine gave some opening remarks, discussing the College’s budget concerns, the similar situation of other NESCACs, and how she’s working to fix it, in light of the open forum’s topics. Dean Arcelus gave some background as to why the Lyft pass cuts occurred– years ago, we used to have Camel Vans drive a specific route throughout the day, which became ineffective and unpopular, and ultimately replaced by the Lyft pass system for designated routes. The decision to make these cuts now is partially about budget as the program was extremely expensive, but also to do with sustainability, and encouraging both walking and public transportation usage. The use of our own transportation system separate from the NL public transport also hurts our potential relationship with the city, and the future of public transport in NL– the Coast Guard Academy is working on doing the same thing.
- The new system, which went into effect this week, cuts down the Lyft pass usage to Manwaring for students who live there, passes to and from urgent care, and passes to and from Union Station in downtown NL. Other than these, students have free access to SEAT buses, including the 1 bus (between Norwich and the NL train station), which leaves from outside the Arboretum, the 14 bus, which runs throughout NL and Waterford (Target, Crystal Mall, Michaels, Panera, etc) and leaves from the Briggs and William st. intersection, and other new public transport programs the College is working on developing, such as New London Smartride, which students already have access to, and the Hop, a similar program for Waterford.
- Students raised concerns including that the buses take a very long time to go to certain locations, run infrequently, and that our range of motion is still limited, which is incompatible with the busy schedules of many students. Other concerns focused on how cuts seem to be most affecting students who cannot afford alternatives, like cars, and how students were not consulted before these cuts were decided on. Also, some students are unfamiliar with how public transportation works, and have accessibility or safety concerns about the buses. The College is currently working on furthering programs to teach students how to use public transportation and get comfortable with the system.
- SGA approved the previous resolution on minor changes to the bylaws concerning the functions of certain committees and wording changes.
- EPC is currently drafting resolutions on piloting an FYS with one professor teaching and another advising, and another FYS without a writing requirement.
- Please be respectful of your common spaces. Recent vandalism and destruction of common spaces in residence halls has gotten ridiculous– please have respect for not only your fellow students, but also the janitorial staff that take care of us and our homes.
COLUMN FOR 10/23
- Lucy Morrison ‘26, Waste Management Intern for Sustainability, presented a Sustainable Projects Fund resolution to request Terracycle boxes for the Lab School. Terracycle offers collection boxes for typical non-recyclables that are then shipped to them to be repurposed and recycled. They requested funding for a three-year subscription for two boxes for the Lab School, one for writing/art supplies and another for old or broken toys. This would cost $1,000 total. Responses brought up by General Assembly were that we should look into putting these boxes in other places on campus as well, especially if these boxes work well. Because of the timeline of this semester, we agreed to vote on the resolution early, and passed the resolution.
- There have been an influx of professors asking for scheduled exams recently, partially due to the rise in cheating and AI usage. The Academic and Administrative Procedures Committee (AAPC) is wondering on how to respond to this, and we discussed our desire to retain self-scheduled exams and on whether or not SGA was interested in writing a letter in support of self-scheduled exams. Please give any feedback you have on this to Chair of Academic Affairs, Nic Sanfilippo.
COLUMN FOR 10/30
- SGA will not meet on Thursday, Nov. 6, due to the All-College Symposium. As this will be published after the fact, you’d better have gone…
- A form will go out before Thanksgiving break to see who will and will not be on campus, please fill this out even if you’re just leaving late or arriving early; it’s for safety and dining reasons, you won’t be denied.
- Becky Pritchett, Associate Director of Residential Life, hosted an open forum on the Housing Lottery, to ensure that ResLife can get adequate feedback before the lottery happens in the spring. She presented first on the Housing survey that went out this semester, which only received 39 responses, less than last year, but where there weren’t any major concerns, besides some ‘myths’ that Associate Director Pritchett debunked for us: there are no ‘forced’ rooms, such as a ‘forced’ double or triple, as all dorm occupancy meets fire marshal regulations. Second, that group housing does not take away from the singles lottery– they’re both by lottery number, so everyone has the same chance of getting a single. Lastly, no one was forced into specialty housing if they did not specifically apply for specialty housing. Proposed changes from students who responded to the form asked for more apartments (which we unfortunately cannot immediately grant), more time to choose for group housing, and lottery number reductions.
- Last year, changes to the lottery included giving more time to select a room, providing more information about laundry and other amenities in the housing booklet, having the large and small lotteries happen at the same time, moving the doubles/triples/quads lottery until after the singles lottery, and allowing students to apply for multiple specialty housing options. Things that ResLife are thinking about changing this year include lengthening the specialty housing applications to create less overlap with apartment applications, not allowing any students to live off campus next year (meaning they’re not allowed to live in any not Conn-owned buildings) due to class sizes returning to normal, allowing students to apply to doubles/triples/quads in kitchen-access housing as groups, and debating between the lottery by type and lottery by priority systems, which I’ll describe below:
- General Assembly gave feedback on the two proposed systems for the Housing Lottery. Lottery by type, which is what we do now, has five rounds (and a round 0, for SAS placements), that has rounds, in this order, for Apartments, Specialty, Group, Singles, then doubles/triples/quads. The other option, lottery by priority, would keep a preliminary round for SAS placements, and then have all rounds happen simultaneously with people indicating their top option, and then entering subsequent rounds for other options if that one is not granted. Feedback from General Assembly tended to favor the current system, as it may allow people to plan ahead and have more control over the rooms they’re assigned, as well as feeling that the second system was a bit overly confusing.
- Maddie McDaniel, Parliamentarian, presented a resolution that would not let students who matriculated in the current year (meaning first-years or transfer students) run for mid-year SGA Executive Board elections, elections that typically occur when an Executive Board member is going abroad for the spring semester, or graduating early. The resolution is meant to ensure that the elected student is someone with a holistic understanding of Conn College culture and processes, and would push first-year students to enjoy the full Conn experience before entering into an intensive position, as first years are not allowed to run for Executive Board positions at the beginning of the year either. Some suggestions from the General Assembly included allowing first-years or transfers who served on the GA for the first semester of the year to run in these elections, and allowing first-year or transfer students-at-large to run if no other candidates run in the election. We tabled the conversation to discuss the resolution again later.
- We discussed including people without House Senators on emails- unfortunately, it’s an issue for current House Senators to email other houses, as they were not elected fairly by those students and therefore should not have access to the mailing lists. It was proposed that Class Presidents could send out emails to their classes, but this might require an amendment to the bylaws, so more discussion will have to happen.
- AAPC discussed the distinction of graduating with honors in your major, and whether or not students felt that this was valuable. As of right now, because of how DegreeWorks functions by incorrectly calculating GPAs within a major, giving out the distinction to students is a very labor-intensive process where faculty have to calculate individual GPAs by hand, so the committee wanted to know if this was something that students would approve of going without. Feedback from the General Assembly tended towards keeping the distinction, supporting that students wanted to keep it and found value in receiving it, and encouraged looking into fixing DegreeWorks, and not taking away the distinction due to its faulty calculations.
- The Dining Committee met and discussed the issue of Harris having extremely limited options over Fall Break, with Peter Johnson attributing it to there not being funds allocated for Fall Break because of the functions of student meal plans, but said that Delicious Without should have been open, and will be looking into why it was largely closed. There’s a new limit on Made-to-Order foods in Harris, such as not being able to order two sandwiches at a time, but students can always just get back in line and order again. Harris’ hours are predetermined, but if it becomes a big issue amongst students, conversations can be had about changing them. In terms of Oasis, they’d like to know exactly what student athletes are looking for with food/protein options– they’re concerned about having pre-made food such as wraps or burgers just for freshness reasons, but recognize that students would like more grab-and-go options at Oasis. Dine at Conn social media will also make some posts that help explain exactly what a meal swipe is and what’s included in it. We’re looking into hosting an open forum on dining, whether with Chartwells administration or with the Dining Committee.
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